I absolutely agree with you. And I also thinks this highlights the problem I mentioned with this article: it lacks insight and perspective.
I'm confident, that Guild Wars 2, will not be able to maintain itself as interesting to the amount of people that are now playing. Once people become familiar and fun starts to become routine.
I've played to lvl 60 on my Guardian, and frankly, I'm not impressed. As you mentioned, it doesn't feel like a multiplayer experience. Even with lots of people around me, I'm often the ONLY PERSON SAYING ANYTHING. Why? Because communcation isn't needed. At all.

I have yet to fail more than one event, and that event was an escort I did ALONE. The game isn't hard at all. It's not a challenge what so ever. I'll just ress myself from downed, or get ressed on the battlefield or run back from the nearest Waypoint. I'm not saying WoW is any harder, but my gripe is that ArenaNet has not delivered what they talked about: Challenging, meaningful combat and "questing".

Kil'jaeden, Skullcrusher and Mannoroth are servers I think when someone says PvP server

but a pretty good article nonetheless

Originally Posted by hx9

Graphics... the better graphics are, the more exclusive they are to other players. The quality of graphics in GW2 forces some of my good friends to be unable to play. World of Warcraft wins in this department because it includes a wider audience. Both games should meet in the middle.

lol i play the game on a $400 piece of crap. 20-45 fps everywhere. shit doesn't even run 25 man raids in WoW at 60 FPS.

You can't call yourself a PC gamer with a dual core desktop processor, radeon HD 42xx and 2GB of RAM.

Even with lots of people around me, I'm often the ONLY PERSON SAYING ANYTHING. Why? Because communcation isn't needed. At all.

I don't communicate in my 5-mans, or most raid encounters, even on Heroic - I just take my headset off, because I don't care to listen to the random announcements being made over vent that don't need to be made because the game and my mods already make them for me. I do my job, don't say a damn thing, and we still down the boss.

Don't act like any other online game is any better at being social. :P

Last edited by DrakeWurrum; 2012-09-01 at 11:39 PM.

I hope you haven't forgotten my role in this little story. I'm the leading man. You know what they say about the leading man? He never dies.

If you give in to your impulses in this world, the price is that it changes your personality in the real world. The player and character are one and the same.

I picked up a copy of GW2 on Friday afternoon. Buddy of mine told me to try it.

Been messing around with it and find it quite fun. It's better optimized for my PC than some other mmo's I've played and quite impressed so far. Spent several hours on it exploring every niche and cranny of the city and first human zone (played a few hours as other characters too)

Movement and Combat is fluid and I really like that you can cast while moving. I really, really have taken a liking to it. Don't know how they heck they allow for a hundred people on the screen and not kill my FPS, but I am very impressed... and hooked.

They just need to sort out the bugs on the AH and I will be a happy camper. However, I see no reason that they won't.

I find this situation better than what Blizzard did for underwater combat. They very lazily just stuck you underwater, gave you the ability to breathe and swim faster (when they didn't have to make you swim slow to begin with), and said "Here, underwater content! AMAZING right?!" Not all skills translate well into a 3D environment. There's a reason certain utility skills in GW2 don't work at all underwater.

There's even forms of CC that's unique to being underwater.

I have 2 weapons underwater as a Guardian, that's 10 skills I -might- swap between. One of those weapons is a melee weapon. Now on underwater boss fights or big fights, I strongly recommend against melee because it's clumsy and awkward under water. So I'm often stuck with my ranged weapon, whose skills I have to repeatedly click or just wait for them to get off CD.
Underwater CC is useless. It's really short and some times even meaningless, like my guardians ranged CC that simply makes the target sink or a second. Yay?
Or the melee weapon CC that isn't really a CC, but a skill that pulls a mob towards me. It's range is short and it's hard to predict the distance of a target underwater, regardless, no mob ever runs away from me underwater nor do I have trouble getting close to them.

That's how many skills feel, like, "Why do I have this skill?" In big events all you'll be doing is use the stuff that does damage anyway. It's not like any event requires any thought when you're 20+ people.
I don't find that GW2 has done any better with underwater combat. They have done it differently yes, but not better.

---------- Post added 2012-09-02 at 01:44 AM ----------

Originally Posted by DrakeWurrum

I don't communicate in my 5-mans, or most raid encounters, even on Heroic - I just take my headset off, because I don't care to listen to the random announcements being made over vent that don't need to be made because the game and my mods already make them for me. I do my job, don't say a damn thing, and we still down the boss.

Don't act like any other online game is any better at being social. :P

The fatal mistake here is that you think I'm comparing the game to WoW. I'm not.
I'm judging it on it's own merits.

The fatal mistake here is that you think I'm comparing the game to WoW. I'm not.
I'm judging it on it's own merits.

You can't judge these games in a void, though. Your complaint is essentially that the game doesn't force you to be social. That, apparently, people can make the choice not to communicate, simply because it's not needed. I don't see how that's a drawback.

---------- Post added 2012-09-01 at 06:47 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Creamy Flames

Underwater CC is useless. It's really short and some times even meaningless, like my guardians ranged CC that simply makes the target sink or a second. Yay?

I have to genuinely ask: Where, out of water, does any form of CC last all that long? The best you get is cripple or immob, or even weakness. CC in the entire game is extremely short-lived, and has to be tactically used.

I consider the underwater combat here to be superior to underwater combat in other online games, hands-down, by design. Even with the restriction in our options as to what weapons we equip.

The way it's different is exactly the way that makes me feel that it's better. They didn't just throw you underwater and say "Kay, done." They actually thought about how to make it work.

It may not be particularly expansive yet, but just wait until they start adding more weapons to the game.

Last edited by DrakeWurrum; 2012-09-01 at 11:49 PM.

I hope you haven't forgotten my role in this little story. I'm the leading man. You know what they say about the leading man? He never dies.

If you give in to your impulses in this world, the price is that it changes your personality in the real world. The player and character are one and the same.

Really? I haven't seen any of the sort. Why are you trying to provoke reactions on something that isn't happening?

Some comparisons are made, because you need to compare to gain perspective and to... make comparisons. Like regarding underwater combat. Only 2 MMO's have done that to my knowledge, and those are WoW and GW2. It's only natural to compare the merits of both ways it's been implemented.

---------- Post added 2012-09-02 at 01:51 AM ----------

Originally Posted by DrakeWurrum

You can't judge these games in a void, though. Your complaint is essentially that the game doesn't force you to be social. That, apparently, people can make the choice not to communicate, simply because it's not needed. I don't see how that's a drawback.

---------- Post added 2012-09-01 at 06:47 PM ----------

I have to genuinely ask: Where, out of water, does any form of CC last all that long? The best you get is cripple or immob, or even weakness. CC in the entire game is extremely short-lived, and has to be tactically used.

You don't see the issue with an MMO being anti-social? With 20 people not sharing a word, ever, during an event?

Did I even imply that it's longer anywhere? No. You're reading too much into what I write, just because I'm being very critical. CC on land has a little more impact because it's much more manageable and controllable.

Even so, CC is hardly needed. I have had no need for it so far. Buffing myself and putting damage forward is what's useful. Now if you can coordinate CC with other people, it becomes a useful tool. But that's only doable by voice communication.

Again though I really have to remind you to not look at me like I'm comparing GW2 to anything else or that I'm a fanboy of some other game because I give strong criticism.

Just wait until you try out the god temples in Orr. I hear the mechanics there are as complex as any raid mechanic, but I'm not anywhere near that level. Jumping around too many characters with my girlfriend to really get a properly leveled character - she gets bored easy.

They are not, the most advanced thing I have seen in Orr was probably a boss that healed when his minions were alive so you had to kill them before they healed him too much. Everything in Orr is pretty much a big zerg but imo still very fun because you can easily fail these events if you are not enough people. On desolation we spend over 30 mins trying to kill the boss I mentioned with one guy trying to raid lead in /M it was quite funny. Anyways after those 30min the entire zone got DC and the boss despawned ROFL.

The dungeons I have tried so far (only missing 2) was not very complicated either but tbh it is almost impossible to make a complicated boss when there is no tanks, healers or dps. Just because they are not complicated does not mean they cant be fun as they just overtune the damage instead so it stays a challenge.

That said I do think GW should have raids (10 or 25 dont really care) because that would keep me away from playing other MMOs.

Well, Dragon Soul wasn't that amazing, but they still did manage to make the fights themselves fairly exciting, I think. Except for the one dragon boss where the only mechanic is to push a fancy button that teleports you to the twilight realm as a free "get out of jail free" card. They just needed to rehash old models less. And have less plot holes in their story.

That's what we need. Bioware + Blizzard + Arena Net. Take the strengths of each one.

I enjoyed all of DS save the last DW encounter. It felt EXTREMELY anti-climactic to just kill 4 claws then bash at his head while killing adds. I didn't get that sense of "I killed the big bad guy this xpac" that I had with the Lich King and Illidan.

"Do not only practice your art, but force yourself into its secrets, for it and knowledge can raise men to the divine." -- Ludwig Van Beethoven

Graphics... the better graphics are, the more exclusive they are to other players. The quality of graphics in GW2 forces some of my good friends to be unable to play. World of Warcraft wins in this department because it includes a wider audience. Both games should meet in the middle.

Your friends are doing something wrong then, because GW2 is far better optimized than WoW. In fact, I'd venture to say that I get a better framerate in GW2 than I did in WoW.

Graphics... the better graphics are, the more exclusive they are to other players. The quality of graphics in GW2 forces some of my good friends to be unable to play. World of Warcraft wins in this department because it includes a wider audience. Both games should meet in the middle.

Again, the more character models, the more loading time that occurs. This is part of the graphical issue that causes GW2 to fail. Adjusting individual history causes quests to be different which, if you dig deeply, means that you can't play with friends who pick different history on some quests! MMO is supposed to be multiplayer, but questing in GW2 feels very single player.

im sorry but it depends on the engine loading data and whether you have an SSD, if you don't have a good computer then maybe try a facebook game or pony island adventure quest, saying your computer cant handle it, when even a core 2 duo does, is just bad form.

we don't want wows popularity contest... we just want a good MMO and GW2 provides

trying to compare wow to GW2 is like comparing an old car, compared to one with the latest model and electronics and power steering... wows just a dated classic that is clunky where as all new MMOs are what it should be compared too, not some old bomb of a car (wow)

I really liked the article, thanks for sharing. Also, to people adding "rebuttles", give it a rest. If you don't like the game, then don't bother posting about it, it's as simple as that. I didn't like D3 at all, but I never post in that section about why I didn't like it.